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why Harvey matters (assuming you think anything about Batman comics matters at all)
Oh, one more thing, for the Bat-nerds out there, especially my fellow Harvey fans.
In his essay, "How Jason Todd Went Wrong a Second Time", the blogger MightyGodKing starts by talking about how Jason is so obviously a sucky suck-ass character, but that having him brought back to life didn't have to end up sucking like it did. Quoth MGK:
There’s a good reason for it: “what if Jason Todd came back” was a really good idea. Forcing Batman to relive his greatest failure - and the implicit criticisms of his method that are inherent in Jason Todd’s presence - is goddamned great story fodder, because under normal circumstances Batman is a very difficult character to believably threaten or damage. He’s Batman: he’s the best at everything always. That’s why he’s Batman, but this makes it hard to create an antagonist who can really get to him. The Joker and Two-Face and all the rest can be external threats to Batman, but they really can’t get inside his head and make him doubt himself. Jason Todd, however, could do that.
At which point I stopped reading the essay entirely. I still haven't read the rest.
I plan to later, once I've rested up a bit and have time to kill, but for the time being, that was all I could stand to read before the wheels in my head started turning. I immediately went to the comments, curious to see if anyone else had touched upon what I could only barely begin to formulate, the kind of response that could take me a good hour to properly compose.
Of the 45 responses, only one discussed the topic in question. But the commenter, "BSD," did so in a manner that put to shame anything I could have come up with on my own, at least in my current state:
Two-Face is the Best Batman Villain because he DOES get inside of Batman’s head. He’s precisely what Alfred is scared of, what Bruce in his heart of heart really worries about, and simply by existing challenges the entire Bruce/Batman project (this is part of why Hush is stupid and boring: he’s completely redundant.) In fact, his purely internal challenge to Batman is twofold: First, he is the synthesis of the Batman/Joker thesis/antithesis, and second, he is a dangerous what-might-have-been for Bruce.
Joker is so important to Batman because he is his perfect inversion. No real identity, no real origin, he is devoted to and emblematic of an unjust, meaningless world, directly opposed to the core Batman idea that the world can be “cleaned up”. Two-face, then, as the synthesis of the opposites, is even more of a challenge, arguably a better Batman than Batman in that he accepts that the world is fundamentally random and chaotic, that events occur without meaning, but that once chaos has had its say, in the best Two-Face stories, he works with that, either building the best world he can from the world that exists, or destroying it as best he can (my favorite Two-Face story remains the one in which he’s cured, is back to being Harvey full time, but then claws off half of his own face).
He’s also a challenge to Batman in that he evokes a hypothetical “Alleyman” or “Two-Gun”, a vigilante who just hangs around alleys and shoots people. If anything, Two-Face’s origin would be more, not less, likely to produce a hero rather than a madman.
And every time they fight, Bruce has to ask himself about that.
Wow. I honestly don't think I could have said it better myself. I wanna find this person and buy him/her a beer.
How disappointingly typical that not a single person other than myself have even responded to his comment, or even MGK's throwaway dismissal about Harvey in the first place (not to mention the Joker, that one's not really true either; of ALL the Bat-villains to name-drop for characters who don't fuck around with Batman's head and heart, those two might just be the worst examples to make!) but it's so amazing to read someone else actually getting what I've spent the last three years and eight drafts trying to explore.
Now, more than ever, I want to get back to work on Draft Nine, start those massive overhauls of the second half. But no, I need to give the original HEFNER MONOLOGUES a script overhaul in of itself, plus get to work on two brand-new separate projects for my 2010 Fringe tour. I doubt I'll really be able to give the Harvey book the attention it needs until late Fall. Serious sadness, people.
But until then, here's hoping more people take BSD's astute observations to heart, as far too many writers have completely missed the point*. Because that, folks, that is why Harvey Dent is so vital to the Batman mythos to this very day, and why he's one of the most compelling and vibrant characters out there now. In my own humble opinion, naturally.
What think you, BatFans?
*Including great writers like Chuck Dixon. He wrote one of the all-time greatest Joker stories in BATMAN: DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, but his take on Harvey is one of the most glaring examples of Two-Face-Fail out there, particularly as shown in BATMAN: PRODIGAL and ROBIN: YEAR ONE.
Dixon's sneeringly evil Harvey will happily screw with the coin's outcome and essentially cheat to make the odds work in his favor, which right there just turns him into a one-note madman with a gimmick who also beat the shit out of a child with a baseball bat. Not that the Robin beating isn't great in its way, but damn, what I'd give to see (or write) a proper retake on that whole sequence.
In his essay, "How Jason Todd Went Wrong a Second Time", the blogger MightyGodKing starts by talking about how Jason is so obviously a sucky suck-ass character, but that having him brought back to life didn't have to end up sucking like it did. Quoth MGK:
There’s a good reason for it: “what if Jason Todd came back” was a really good idea. Forcing Batman to relive his greatest failure - and the implicit criticisms of his method that are inherent in Jason Todd’s presence - is goddamned great story fodder, because under normal circumstances Batman is a very difficult character to believably threaten or damage. He’s Batman: he’s the best at everything always. That’s why he’s Batman, but this makes it hard to create an antagonist who can really get to him. The Joker and Two-Face and all the rest can be external threats to Batman, but they really can’t get inside his head and make him doubt himself. Jason Todd, however, could do that.
At which point I stopped reading the essay entirely. I still haven't read the rest.
I plan to later, once I've rested up a bit and have time to kill, but for the time being, that was all I could stand to read before the wheels in my head started turning. I immediately went to the comments, curious to see if anyone else had touched upon what I could only barely begin to formulate, the kind of response that could take me a good hour to properly compose.
Of the 45 responses, only one discussed the topic in question. But the commenter, "BSD," did so in a manner that put to shame anything I could have come up with on my own, at least in my current state:
Two-Face is the Best Batman Villain because he DOES get inside of Batman’s head. He’s precisely what Alfred is scared of, what Bruce in his heart of heart really worries about, and simply by existing challenges the entire Bruce/Batman project (this is part of why Hush is stupid and boring: he’s completely redundant.) In fact, his purely internal challenge to Batman is twofold: First, he is the synthesis of the Batman/Joker thesis/antithesis, and second, he is a dangerous what-might-have-been for Bruce.
Joker is so important to Batman because he is his perfect inversion. No real identity, no real origin, he is devoted to and emblematic of an unjust, meaningless world, directly opposed to the core Batman idea that the world can be “cleaned up”. Two-face, then, as the synthesis of the opposites, is even more of a challenge, arguably a better Batman than Batman in that he accepts that the world is fundamentally random and chaotic, that events occur without meaning, but that once chaos has had its say, in the best Two-Face stories, he works with that, either building the best world he can from the world that exists, or destroying it as best he can (my favorite Two-Face story remains the one in which he’s cured, is back to being Harvey full time, but then claws off half of his own face).
He’s also a challenge to Batman in that he evokes a hypothetical “Alleyman” or “Two-Gun”, a vigilante who just hangs around alleys and shoots people. If anything, Two-Face’s origin would be more, not less, likely to produce a hero rather than a madman.
And every time they fight, Bruce has to ask himself about that.
Wow. I honestly don't think I could have said it better myself. I wanna find this person and buy him/her a beer.
How disappointingly typical that not a single person other than myself have even responded to his comment, or even MGK's throwaway dismissal about Harvey in the first place (not to mention the Joker, that one's not really true either; of ALL the Bat-villains to name-drop for characters who don't fuck around with Batman's head and heart, those two might just be the worst examples to make!) but it's so amazing to read someone else actually getting what I've spent the last three years and eight drafts trying to explore.
Now, more than ever, I want to get back to work on Draft Nine, start those massive overhauls of the second half. But no, I need to give the original HEFNER MONOLOGUES a script overhaul in of itself, plus get to work on two brand-new separate projects for my 2010 Fringe tour. I doubt I'll really be able to give the Harvey book the attention it needs until late Fall. Serious sadness, people.
But until then, here's hoping more people take BSD's astute observations to heart, as far too many writers have completely missed the point*. Because that, folks, that is why Harvey Dent is so vital to the Batman mythos to this very day, and why he's one of the most compelling and vibrant characters out there now. In my own humble opinion, naturally.
What think you, BatFans?
*Including great writers like Chuck Dixon. He wrote one of the all-time greatest Joker stories in BATMAN: DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, but his take on Harvey is one of the most glaring examples of Two-Face-Fail out there, particularly as shown in BATMAN: PRODIGAL and ROBIN: YEAR ONE.
Dixon's sneeringly evil Harvey will happily screw with the coin's outcome and essentially cheat to make the odds work in his favor, which right there just turns him into a one-note madman with a gimmick who also beat the shit out of a child with a baseball bat. Not that the Robin beating isn't great in its way, but damn, what I'd give to see (or write) a proper retake on that whole sequence.
no subject
Millions of people Read Cathy every day and it's still unforgivable tripe. And it's not nearly as in love with itself as Something Positive. But anyway.
Although honestly, I think that both you and Chris Bird have points. I love Two-Face as a villain, but he only really works as something more than an external threat if the writer choses to acknowledge certain things about his history that are sometimes considered canon and sometimes not - like Bruce and Harvey being friends. Even then, while it's true that is is a source of regret for Bruce, he is certainly not a source of regret as deep as that of Jason Todd's death. Batman can tell himself that he's not REALLY responsible for Two-Face; he can't tell himself that with Jason Todd. Batman has fought Two-Face so many times that Bruce's fondness and concern for Harvey doesn't really hamper his quest for justice; when Jason Todd was brought back, him as a villain was a new idea and people had legitimate cause to wonder how Batman would react.
Jason Todd is the direct result of the failure of Batman as a construct AND Bruce as a person. Harvey Dent is ultimately the result of shitty, shitty circumstance, and the Joker represents something totally unique, but he's not there because Batman failed.
So to that end I think he has a point.
I also think that people get way too invested in "their" characters, in fandom. I'm not sure when I started to feel this way. I worry that I am one of those people who is like, "Oh, I USED to feel that way, but I'm too OLD for superhero comics now" - those people are condescending dicks who are dead inside and I hate them! - but honestly, the stories just compel me less and less, I have a progressively harder time relating to the characters, and I have a hard time getting it up for this kind of thing these days.
NOT THAT THAT STOPPED ME FROM AN EPIC COMMENT OF DOOM ON THE SUBJECT, HA HA.
no subject
But in the best of those, Batman has blamed himself to a certain extent for Harvey becoming Two-Face. In the original appearances, it was because it was Batman's intervention that deflected Moroni's hand throwing the acid. In the past thirty or so years, it's Batman not acting early enough once he started seeing signs of Harvey cracking. In the animated series, Bruce even had a nightmare where his feelings of shame and guilt put his failure to save Harvey as just another failure on par with his failure to save his parents. Which speaks mainly to Bruce's boatload of issues more than anything else, but still.
In the end, I have to concede that the failure of Jason cuts more deeply, and to that end, Birdman has a point. But me, I wish we could see more stories where the failure to save Harvey is acknowledged and explored, because even if those aren't always canon (although at this point, isn't it?) it's certainly far more emotionally and thematically powerful than a one-note coin-flipping supervillain in a blind throwing death pennies and acid rain down on New York City.
Aye, I have sometimes found myself slipping into that "my character" mindset, mainly because of the frustration I would get at reading other fans get carried away. Especially when those fans are wrong about "their" characters, but that's another rant entirely.
Sadly, I dare say I feel where you're coming from. Although wait, I should ask, the stories that compel you less and less... are we talking about the current superhero output, or even the stuff you used to love? Because in the next post or two, I'm gonna mention the HAWKWORLD issues I've plowed through and loved. I got the mini-series, plus issues #1-25 (missing issue #11, tho)! I loved it all, mainly for the characters and dynamic of Katar and Shayera, as well as the mythology of Thanagar itself! I now have a greater appreciation for the Downsider member of the Green Lantern Corps, and his fears of being dissected for the entertainment of the upper class.
Also, nice to know the utter!dick!Hawkman in JLI was, in fact, a Thanagarian spy and all-around asshole.